Notable items from AIP's history newsletter

I received the latest issue of the American Institute of Physics (AIP)'s history newsletter, and there are a couple notable items worthy of bringing to the attention of DTLR's readers.

First, a digest by Jon Phillips of a new paper by Blum and Choudhuri on the history of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). They claim to fill a gap in the literature that I too have noticed:  the absence of a comprehensive history of MHD.  However, the 2007 book published by Springer, Magnetohydrodynamics:  Historical Evolution and Trends, edited by Molokov, Moreau, and Moffatt, which Blum and Chodhuri briefly cite, is an important resource in this regard.  To this amateur's eye, that book should have been better highlighted in Blum & Choudhuri's Introduction.  Nonetheless, their contribution is most welcomed.

Second, I strongly recommend this video lecture on the 18th century Jamaican astronomer Francis Williams, by historian Fara Dabhoiwala, presented earlier this month at the AIP.  The lecturer gradually unspools his findings about a forgotten and unfairly maligned figure, whose proper role in the history of astronomy can now be appreciated.  Excellent historical detective work and storytelling by Prof. Dabhoiwala.

Physicists and astronomers honored on US postage stamps: another update.

I previously blogged (2021) about physicists and astronomers honored on U.S. postage stamps, with an update last year here.  It's time for another update, not because any new stamps of interest have been issued, but because I have learned of two other stamps that I should have mentioned in my original post, along with a few other notable finds.

First, in 1973, the 500th anniversary year of his birth, Polish astronomer Copernicus appeared on an 8 cent stamp.  He is a major figure in the history of science, and the only one of those mentioned in this series of posts that did not live in the United States at some point during their life.

Second, in 1988, aviation pioneer Samuel P. Langley (along with his Aerodrome #5) appeared on a 45 cent airmail stamp.  He was an astronomer, mathematician, and physicist.

While I find it odd that I couldn't think of a single chemist honored on a postage stamp (but see below), the American Chemical Society has twice been so honored:  in a 1951 three-cent stamp celebrating the ACS's diamond jubilee, and a 1976 thirteen-cent stamp celebrating their centenary.  Similarly, the American Society of Civil Engineers was honored on the centenary of its founding with a 3-cent stamp in 1952.  This was preceded by another 3-cent stamp in 1950 honoring the Railroad Engineers of America.  This stamp features "Casey" Jones, and was issued on the 50th anniversary of his death. 

"The Sciences" were honored on a 5-cent stamp in 1963, celebrating the centenary of the founding of the National Academy of Sciences, whose first president was a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin.  In 1983, "Science and Industry" was honored on a 20-cent stamp, issued on the 50th anniversary of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

In 2018, a set of four Forever stamps were issued in honor of STEM education.  They honored Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Since I've spent time in the pharmaceutical industry, I will also note that in 1956, a 3-cent stamp honoring the 50th anniversary of the Pure Food and Drug Act was issued, which features Harvey Washington Wiley, a major driving force in the passage of that law, and an official at the USDA agency that was a predecessor to the modern Food and Drug Administration.  So, I found at least one chemist after all!

At some point, I hope to find and scrutinize a history of every postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service, to see if I can find any others of note.

Once again I'm grateful to the website of the Mystic Stamp Company.

Physicists and astronomers honored on US postage stamps - Update!

Continuing the theme of my last post, let me call back a post from 2021, where I blogged about physicists and astronomers depicted on US postage stamps.  Back then I counted about a dozen such, and I conjectured about possible future honorees.  Top of my list among the latter was Nikola Tesla.  Well, this was an oversight on my part, as Tesla was indeed depicted on a 20 cent stamp in the American Inventors series, issued in 1983.  Also depicted on the same stamp is his induction motor.

I am grateful to this list for helping me identify Tesla's stamp. The list has a number of notable foreign stamps as well, but it is incomplete.  For example, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, American Nobel laureates in physics, David Wineland and Daniel Schechtman (both affiliated with NIST), are depicted on foreign postage stamps.

 

Physics Today and fluid mechanics

Back in December, I discussed a couple recent items in Physics Today of great relevance to fluid mechanics.  I remarked that we don't get to see fluid mechanics on the cover of PT very often.  Well, lo and behold, the last couple months have proven me delightfully wrong!  The cover of the April issue featured "Fluid Dynamics of Dry Salt Lakes", referring to a "quick study" article by Beaume, Goehring, and Lasser.  It discusses a theory of groundwater convection as a possible explanation of polygonal patterns on dry lake beds ("salt polygons").  The very next month, the cover features "A Shocking Start to Stars", referring to a piece by Ceccarelli and Codella, on the role of shock waves in the interstallar medium, especially in star formation, and even in synthesizing certain precursor molecules of life itself.

However, I was personally most enthralled by another piece that also appeared in the May issue by meteorologist Tim Palmer, "The real butterfly effect and maggoty applies".  The title seems to have been taken from two earlier efforts, one coauthored by Palmer in 2019 on the real butterfly effect (published in Nonlinearity), and the other a 2002 PT Reference Frame article by Sir Michael Berry on singular limits.  Both these papers seem to have had a strong influence on this article, which mainly deals with weather predictibility, and more generally the predictability of nonlinear systems, including the limits of artificial intelligence-based prediction.  The article is very good, informative, and very readable.  I'd come across the singular limit concept in discussions of aerodynamic lift, where viscosity is the parameter that when taken to exactly zero (and not just a limit approaching zero) results in the impossibility of lift.  Reading Palmer's piece, and then Berry's, has helped me understand that there are other such examples in physics.

Galileo's Assayer and Torricelli's barometer

A couple months ago, Science magazine had a retrospective by Alex Gomez-Marin on Galileo's The Assayer, which was published 400 years ago this year.  Part of a series of scientific disputes regarding the nature of comets, this particular piece lays out Galileo's methodological perspective on how science should be done.  I've only read selected excerpts in translation, but I do know that others (e.g., Flemish contemporary Simon Stevin) held similar views.

Meanwhile the December issue of Physics Today features a Backscatter item on Torricelli's barometer, by Karina Cooper.  Torricelli was Galileo's last "student", and his work with the barometer was an important step in the understanding of hydrostatic pressure.  Together with Torricelli's efflux law, this achievement ranks him as a major founder of 17th century fluid mechanics, along with Stevin and Galileo's older student, Benedetto Castelli.

My interest in these matters, and the history of classical physics more generaly, has grown noticeably in the last year or so, particularly in the arena of fluid mechanics, which is an interdisciplinary field involving physics, mathematics, and engineering.  Seeing these items in Science and Physics Today is a great way to wind down the year of 2023.  

 As a bonus I praise Physics Today for featuring a cover story in November on research in contemporary fluid mechanics, namely the piece by Detlef Lohse and Olga Shishkina on "Ultimate turbulent thermal convection".  However, the authors' insistence on the relevance of the reported work for real world situations, such as atmospheric and photospheric convection, seems to me insincere when they focus on results for "classical regime" aspect ratios between 0.5 and 1.0.  The atmospheric and photospheric examples involve large aspect ratios.

Nonetheless, the cover is worth reproducing here.  We don't get to see fluid mechanics featured on the front cover of Physics Today all that often!

If I don't write again this year, may you all have a wonderful holiday season and a blessed new year.  See you in 2024!

Prometheus' Great Minds series on physics

Continuing the theme of my last post, the publisher Prometheus (which is now owned by Roman & Littlefield) has perhaps a more extensive catalog of "classics" in physics and astronomy than the others mentioned in my previous post.  As far as I can tell, their Great Minds series includes:

• Moritz Schlick's Space and Time in Contemporary Physics:  An Introduction to the Theory of Relativity and Gravitation.
• Fred Holye's Of Men and Galaxies.
• James Clerk Maxwell's Matter and Motion.
• William Thomson and Peter Guthrie Tait's The Elements of Natural Philosophy.
• Marie Curie's Radioactive Substances.
• Michael Faraday's The Forces of Matter.
• Johannes Kepler's Epitome of Copernican Astronomy and Harmonies of the World.  (Selections of both works are published together in a single volume.)
• Nicholaus Copernicus' On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres.
• Galileo Galilei's Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences.
• Isaac Newton's Principia.
• Albert Einstein's Relativity.

Some of the above volumes consist only in selections, rather than the entire work.

This series is perhaps second only to Dover Publications in its effort to keep in print some of the classic works in the history of physics and astronomy.

Physicists and astronomers honored on US postage stamps

Today I received an order of US postage stamps, including a sheet of the new Forever stamp honoring Chinese-American nuclear physicist Chien-Shiung Wu.  Adrian Cho wrote about this stamp last month in Science.  The stamp was issued on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.  As far as I know, Dr. Wu is the third woman physicist honored on a US postage stamp, and the first Chinese-American one.  The end of Cho's article talks about other physicists honored on US postage stamps -- there are many fewer of these than American Nobel Physics Laureates!  Cho mentions several, including some aerospace scientists, though he says the US Postal Service doesn't actually track how many there are.

This got me thinking about that very question.  How many physicists and astronomers are honored on US postage stamps?  There are just over a dozen, by my count. The overlap with mathematicians is considerable (since there are far fewer of those), so I'll include them too in this post.

The most honored American physicist on our nation's postage stamps is, of course, Benjamin Franklin.  It may be no coincidence that Franklin was also the nation's first Postmaster General.  I haven't even tried to count how many US stamps have honored Franklin.

At a distant second place is Albert Einstein, honored on two stamps:  an 8 cent stamp in the Prominent Americans series in 1966, and a 15 cent stamp in 1979 issued on the centenary of his birth. All other physicists on US stamps have a single stamp in their honor.  These include Robert Millikan, on a 37 cent stamp issued in 1982 as part of the Great Americans series, and Enrico Fermi on a 34 cent stamp issued in 2001.

The American Scientists series, which began in 2005, was a boon for physicists.  Josiah Willard Gibbs (a polymath claimed equally by mathematicians and chemists) and Richard P. Feynman were included in the first round (37 cents), while John Bardeen and astronomer Edwin Hubble appear in the 2008 second round (41 cents).  Maria Goeppert Mayer was honored in the third round (2011) with a Forever stamp.  Unfortunately, the series appears to have been discontinued after the third set.  (Did they just not sell well?)  The first round in 2005 also included mathematician John von Neumann, who made colossal contributions to physics, computer science, and meteorology, among other fields.  

The new stamp honoring C.-S. Wu is the second to honor a physicist in the decade since the last set of American Scientists was issued.  It follows the 2018 issue of a Forever stamp honoring Sally K. Ride, astronaut, physicist, and stamp collector.  Of the honored physicists mentioned, Einstein, Millikan, Feynman, and Mayer were Nobel laureates, with Bardeen being a double Nobel laureate in physics.  (Cho's article disucsses that many feel that Wu should have received a Nobel as well.)

Also worthy of note is Benjamin Bannker, honored in 1980 with a 15 cent stamp in the Black Heritage series.  Banneker was a surveyor, mathematician, and astronomer, who like Franklin, published his own almanacs.  A math teacher, Jaime Escalante, was honored with a Forever stamp in 2016.  Along with Wu, Banneker and Escalante are the only non-whites honored by stamps among those discussed in this post.

Since Cho's article mentions aerospace scientists and inventors, let's look at them too.  The Wright Brothers and their achievements were honored on the 25th, 46th, 75th, and 100th anniversaries of their first powered flight.  The first stamp (2 cents) was issued as one of a pair honoring of the 1928 International Civil Aeronautics Conference, in that year.  It featured the Wright Flyer.  Three airmail stamps honored both the Wrights and their aircraft, in 1949 (6 cents) and two in 1978 (31 cents).  Finally on the centenary of their first flight, another stamp featuring the Wright Flyer was issued in 2003 (37 cents).  Other aerospace pioneers include Robert Goddard (1964, 8 cents), Igor Sikorsky (1988, 36 cents airmail), and Theodore von Karman (1992, 29 cents).  As far as I know, von Karman is the only fluid dynamicist honored on a US postage stamp! 

Unfortunately, I cannot think of another American fluid dynamicist who should next be honored with a US postage stamp, for reasons similar to those I wrote about in an earlier post. But what about other American physicists, astronomers, and mathematicians?  Who would you nominate next?

I surmise that those known among the general public would have the best chance of being honored on a stamp, compared to those best known just within the physics community.  So, Nikola Tesla seems an obvious choice.  You can guarantee that such a stamp would sell well.  Perhaps W. Edwards Deming, though he is best known for his work in statistics and management consulting, or J. Robert Oppenheimer.  However, I am delighted that less publicly celebrated figures like Gibbs, Millikan, Fermi, Mayer, Bardeen, and Wu have been honored.  There are thus many worthy choices for the next postage stamp.  If only the American Scientists series could be revived!

Among astronomers, I'm surprised that Carl Sagan hasn't already been so honored.  Among mathematicians, perhaps Benoit Mandelbrot (the maestro of fractals), John Nash (Nobel in economics, subject of A Beautiful Mind), and Katherine Johnson (of Hidden Figures fame) might be considered.

I am grateful to the website of the Mystic Stamp Company, and Wikipedia, sources of the information I have provided above.

A couple of gems from EOS

I would like to direct readers to a couple of old Eos articles from 2016 that I found particularly engrossing.

The first is an article by JoAnna Wendel on dwarf planets.  I vaguely remember Pluto being dethroned from the status of planets some 15 years ago, and placed into the category of dwarf planets.  I remember agreeing with the reasoning, at the time, but didn't pay much attention to dwarf planets.  Wendel's article made me realize that dwarf planets constitute a rich set of objects, integral to our solar system, and as worthy of attention as their big siblings.

The second article by Jeffrey J. Love and Pierdavide Coisson, is about a cluster of geomagnetic storms triggered by solar activity in September 1941, and their effects on the earth during WWII.  There hasn't been such a cluster of geomagnetic within a single 14 hour period since then.  Our civilization would be much more vulnerable now to such an event than we were then, but the article tells of several examples of how life on Earth was disrupted.  It shows the importance of studying, and perhaps forecasting, space weather.